Tortilla Jesus

Tortilla Jesus

On October 5, 1977, Maria Rubio was making fresh tortillas for her husband’s breakfast when she came across a startling discovery: while cooking, the face of Jesus had been burned onto the surface of a tortilla by the heat of the skillet. Maria’s husband, Eduardo, and their daughter, Rosy, recognized the image as well.

Even in the small town of Lake Arthur, New Mexico, word traveled fast. “That afternoon when I drove in from school, there was already a line of people waiting in front of my parents’ house to go in and see the tortilla,” says Rosy Rubio. “It was amazing.”

The Rubio family built a shrine to the tortilla in their backyard, where it stayed for many years and was visited by many thousands of people. However, heat and time warped the image of Jesus on the tortilla’s surface, and in 2006 it was dropped and broken during a show-and-tell at a local elementary school. Although the image of Christ is no longer very recognizable in the broken pieces, the Rubios still keep them in their home.